Theresa discovered art during a fashion studies class at Parsons School of Design in New York City. "I was drawing from a live model and experienced a moment of transcendence as the line in my drawing integrated with the scene before me." That line redirected her life. She returned home to Michigan and enrolled in Grand Valley State University, majoring in fine arts. To finance her education, she created a paper earring line that lasted for years. Gray graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1994. After graduation, Theresa devoted her life to connecting her creativity with the means of supporting herself. She waited tables and helped manage an art gallery. At the same time, she began exhibiting and selling her work at Vesivious Gallery, Thirdstone, The Nines, and Water Street Gallery in Western Michigan. Art was her priority and her survival tool. Her work sold well, and she continued to evolve. She and her husband, Peter Halter, live off the grid near Taos, New Mexico. Dependent upon the sun and the rain to power their handmade home, they are committed to forming beauty and living a life of balance. Theresa has been studying her environs and creating art for more than 30 years. She is often considered an experimental artist . . . she can move quickly from flowers to assemblages of found objects to grass drawings. Observations of her expansive surroundings transformed into spacious field drawings. Unwilling to consider only the monetary value of her work, she takes risks. I am always painting.Not only when brush meets canvas.When I walk to gather wood I am grounding, observing, inhaling my surroundings.Taking in shadow, light, and color.Marveling at the beauty, even in the mundane.Celebrating, mourning the intensity of life and death around me.Being present is my work.I cross a threshold when I create.All that I have absorbed emerges through my hands.My whole-body awareness expresses itself. The painting releases onto the canvas. Sometimes with strength. Other times with ease. Always with the promise of beauty. There is balance in this exchange.Beauty in its authenticity. I return, with deep reverence, to the land.Art is the thread that connects all the joys and challenges of her life. Art was never a decision for Theresa. Art is how she moves in the world.